Oracle Database Reviews

My primary use case is in a university environment.

It's the autonomous database that makes this a valuable product, it's a big feature that Oracle brings to the market. Autonomous patching means that the database more or less patches itself without the need to ask DBAs to apply and test patches. It simplifies the maintenance so this is a strong and autonomous database. They're constantly bringing new features that satisfy their clients. It's a great solution.  

The main issue is that people don't want to be locked into Oracle, and once all the data is in there, it's difficult to switch to Amazon AWS or something else. 

I've used this solution for many years. 

The solution is stable, it's been around for a long time and there's not much for clients to complain about. 

The solution is scalable.

They offer a lot of support these days, including a kind of Oracle cloud management service. You can also buy some database administrators from Oracle. You just have to tell them what you need and they can patch it automatically and monitor the database for you. 

This solution is straightforward. It's good on the database side but I think SAP is taking over now. It's moving faster than Oracle. Even when it comes to the application side, people go to SAP and will sometimes move from Oracle to SAP. I've noticed that a lot in the last five years.

Costs can add up when you use Oracle because they monitor everything and there's a fee for that.

We're now moving to no-code, the BI application. When you buy Oracle Database, it comes as a free tool and you can build anything you want in-house with Apex. You can bring in some developers and develop the application in-house. The solution is PaaS, Platform as a Service, but you can connect with the database and build what you want. Even functional people who don't know how to code, how to do SQL, are able to just drag and drop, building their application to manage and solve anything.

I rate the solution nine out of 10. 

I'm an Oracle business partner. I'm the Oracle partner in Columbia. We resell Oracle hardware and Oracle software licenses. We deal with the leading Oracle solution with our clients in Columbia and outside Columbia. 

We were nominated twice in 2019 and in 2021 as an Oracle Excellence partner for Oracle Database Appliance. It is one of the flagship products of Oracle for databases.

We don't use Oracle Databases for our production purposes because we are Oracle partners, so we use Oracle Database for internal purposes. We use the Autonomous Database. We have very limited use.

The solution is deployed on-prem.

The best features of Oracle Database Server are the security, high availability, and Disaster Recovery solutions with Data Guard. Specifically, on Autonomous Databases, the most valuable features are the automatic scaling and CPU scaling depending on the database workload. Today, the workload is normal and then suddenly the workload gets a spike.

There is a feature that allows the database to have more CPU processing and capacity. That's the feature that the Autonomous Databases provide. The feature that we like very much on Oracle Databases is the APEX, the platform which can be used without any cost to develop a very powerful application on Oracle Databases.

There are actually a lot more features for the Oracle Databases. It is almost impossible for a single person to know and give all the features. Every year, Oracle comes up with new features and new facilities. They are ahead of all other database providers, so we are happy and our client base is also very happy with Oracle Databases.

I have been using Oracle products for more than 24 years.

Oracle Databases are very well known for their stability. If there are new products, they have a process for discovering bugs, and they keep updating the software with the patches that cover all these bugs. The features that Oracle Databases have is enough for us. It's very sophisticated.

There are maybe two or three users who use Oracle Database services that are behind the cloud.

If you want to get Oracle Database on the cloud, it's very simple. It's a question of having the necessary information like the database name and the other things that you want to come together at during initial setup. The database deployment on Oracle cloud is very straightforward. It's maybe a couple of clicks and it gives some information. 

Regarding Oracle Database setup on-premise, the documentation is very good. People who have worked with Oracle Databases for a couple of years know the standard for deploying databases, the operating system requirements, and all of those things. It's really straightforward. It's so standardized that there is nothing more that you need to know. It's not NASA science.

I would rate this solution 10 out of 10.

As a database, the solution has been number one from the beginning, in my experience, because of the features and the performance. The solution has a number of Features including , Maximum Availability Architecture for  zero downtime and Zero Data lost.

The only issue is the speed that Oracle is going with the technology transformation. The marketplace is not adapting. As a whole, Oracle innovation is very fast as an organization, but end users are not so much in a hurry to go.

An area that could be improved is information. Everything is going on containerization architecture now. Oracle is also coming up with data Shards with their Multitenancy Architecture to support this containerization. The gap is in marketing the features and the knowledge that the end users are having. The end users must be educated about the current features, and that is what is lacking with Oracle.

Additional features that could be added in the future need Real Time Analytics features and multi-cloud support. But I have seen Oracle is coming up with the Lakehouse and the delta Lake concepts.  Oracle is heading in the right direction, but the features should be communicated to end-users in the proper way.

I've been working with Oracle for over twenty years.

Overall, the technical support is a little bit lacking, and they should improve. Especially the team who is deployed to handle these tickets. Around 50% of the team itself is lacking some knowledge on handling texting and knowledge. They are very good superior resources, that I understand, but in the APEC region, a little bit of lacking. Especially in India and Singapore, because those are not well handled. But in the US, they handle those things.

Positive

I believe Oracle has reduced the pricing.

Every thing starts with a proper foundation , so as with Oracle Database Architecture. Any one with solid architectural foundation will have a life long journey with Oracle Database. 

This knowledge includes conceptual understanding hands-on with scenario and solutions basis which will allow the DBA  to get through with the product. This What I am doing in the trainings that I conduct - https://www.youtube.com/c/tech...

I would give the solution a nine out of ten.

We are using it for inventory control. We have about 220 servers running Oracle Database, but we're migrating from Oracle to Postgres.

We've had it for a very long time, and up until they changed the way they do the billing, we were happy. A few years ago, they changed the way they charge for the product, and they hit us with a $6 million bill for one year, and that was it. People got very unhappy.

It is a mature product. It is pretty stable. I've got a lot of experience with it, so it is pretty easy to use.

The software really doesn't need any improvement, but the way they do the billing should be improved. They charge by all the chips on the server, whether you use them or not. If you have a server that has 64 chips on it and you use one chip, they charge you for 64, and that's a terrible business model.

Their support is terrible and should be improved.

I've been using Oracle Database for probably 20 years.

It is very stable. It has been around for a very long time, and it is stable now.

It scales vertically. So, the more stuff you want to do, you have to get a bigger server. That's okay if you can do that, but the strategy now is that everybody is scaling horizontally because you can buy a ton of cheap servers and spread them out all over the network.

We have about 10,000 users, and they're doing inventory control. We don't plan to increase its usage. We are planning to decrease its usage and go to Postgres.

Their support is terrible. I stand a better chance talking to my four-year-old grandson than talking to them. At least, he pays attention.

They weren't using any other product previously. They have been using Oracle for maybe 20 years.

It is very straightforward. It takes about three or four hours.

We do it ourselves. For its maintenance, there are probably seven or eight people.

Its cost is astronomical. They charge by the size of the server rather than what you're actually using. It is just a terrible business model.

It has got a ton of features that are great, but you have to pay for them, and we don't want to spend a lot of money.

If you use any of their additional products, you have to pay for those. Almost everything extra is at an additional charge. We also use RAC, and there is an additional charge for that. 

I guess they did evaluate other products, but I wasn't there.

If money is no object, it is a great product, but if you're worried about your budget, find another solution.

I would rate it a 10 out of 10. It is a great product. It has been around forever. It works, but it is too expensive.

The majority of the product is E-Business Suite and Oracle Utilities, while the rest is standard, customized product.

Oracle is somewhat user-friendly, and most customization or integration with Oracle-related projects is simple. Oracle will assist you if you have Oracle-related projects in your organization. It will not help you if you are different.

The dashboards are good.

They would not release new updates if products did not require improvement.

Other Oracle competitors charge less and offer very good products that are stable and scalable.

There are good dashboards and other features, but it was previously included in licensing. They are now charging for each and every feature. It was previously bundled.

Oracle Database has been used by the company for over ten years. I've been with Oracle for over 20 years.

The stability of the Oracle Database is good.

Oracle Database is a scalable solution.

Technical support is good, but it is costly.

The initial setup is straightforward. It's easy.

Because it is a bundled product, we have no choice but to purchase the Oracle Database.

Licensing, as well as support fees, are expensive and should be reduced. 

We use Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Utilities.

They have advertisements, and since Oracle Databases are used by 60% of the world, they don't need my recommendation; they are already publicizing it.

I would rate Oracle Database a seven out of ten.

The solution is primarily used for any persistent storage of data. It's a database and Oracle is very strong on the relational database side. It's great for NoSQL. Oracle Database is a strong relational database management system.

The solution integrates well with third-party products. 

The high availability that it provides is definitely one of a kind. It's active-active and high availability.

The solution is stable.

The scalability is good.

They have worked to make the initial setup a bit easier. 

They have improved a lot, however, recently it has been known that Oracle Database is very complex to manage. You need skilled people to manage it these days in the industry. The databases, which are very prevalent, are very developer-friendly, and most of the tasks are automated. You don't need to have a specialized DBA to look at the database stuff. That said, the ease of management for non-technical individuals could be better. 

Technical support quality has dropped recently. They aren't as helpful or responsive as they used to be. 

I've been dealing with the solution for more than 15 years at this point. It's been a while. 

The solution is very stable. It has good high availability and is very reliable. there are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

We have found the product to be scalable. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so. It's not a problem. 

Recently, I haven't had any experience with Oracle's tech support. However, I have heard it has gone down in quality. It's harder to get in touch with them. The support requests take a lot of time to resolve. On top of that, the kind of expertise or knowledge that someone would expect from the team is a little bit of concern now. They aren't as knowledgeable as they used to be.

While the solution used to be quite complex and difficult, now they have improved it. It's easier. That said, I can say it is still on the complex side.

Generally, when you buy Oracle Database, and if you're buying it for your own data center on the on-prem side, you have to go by the processor cores and the list price is around $47,500 for the enterprise edition per core.

It is a perpetual license; it is not something that you worry about on monthly basis. That said, they do have options now for the subscription-based model, however, there are more data points to be looked at. They have an offering called the data cloud and customer which is a subscription-based model. They can give you hardware plus some software licenses as well.

When it comes to Oracle and all the licensing policy that they have is very complex, the type of audits that they do is not really something that people welcome. 

We are a customer and an end-user.

In terms of deployments, you have an option to host it purely on-prem and you can arrange it to have some workloads on the cloud as well, as a hybrid approach. It is as if you are posting your databases on a private cloud in your own data center that way.

Normally, if someone has to look at different database options available, they would prefer an open-source product. They would go with Oracle if the application they want to host is not supporting any other database but Oracle. If a company has to go with Oracle, it is best to look into the possibility of hosting it on some cloud rather than on-prem.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. As a solution, it is not bad. The technology is great. It provides you with the features that you need. It is just that the cost and then the type of lock-in contract that you get into is not very attractive. As a product, from features and functionality alone, I would rate it a nine out of ten. However, when it comes to cost and other things, I'd rate it lower as there are open-source database options that are very good. 

We are fine with the performance and everything they offer. 

They are the market leader, therefore we don't have any problems or complaints as of now.

The support is always very helpful and responsive. 

The solution is very flexible. It offers a variety of setups.

The stability is good. 

While we get some performance issues from time to time, we get very good support from the Oracle support team, and those issues are sorted out. 

The setup process can be a bit complex. You will want to have someone on-side that can help you navigate the process.

I've been working with the solution for 20 years. 

For the most part, the performance is good and it offers good stability. There aren't really bugs or glitches. it doesn't crash or freeze. 

It's a market leader in RDBMS. It is quite good, compared to other RDBMS such as Db2, SQL Server, or PostgreSQL.

Technical support has been great. As part of operations, people just get some issues, sometimes, however, there might be different reasons for that that may not be related to Oracle itself. Overall we are fine with all the services it offers.

This is a very, very vast database, and it offers a lot of architecture. We can go for grid architecture or rack architecture. We can go for the long architecture or we can go with a simple standalone database. Depending on what an organization wants, we can adapt. However, the implementation also depends on what you want or your organization wants. If you're looking for very complex data centers, for example, having one of the primary databases running in London, and your secondary database or DR site running in Singapore, and both are running on a different rack, you can do that, however, the setup process will be unique to you. There isn't a standard time it takes. It offers a lot of flexibility. Obviously, if you go for the high scalability, high availability, all those features, which are provided by Oracle, then it becomes slightly complex, and we need a dedicated team to handle all those setups. 

If you have the requirement of RDBMS and if you're posting logs there, then, I would suggest that you should go for Oracle. It all depends on your organization's technology roadmap. If a company is more inclined towards Microsoft technology, and they're inclined to Azure cloud, then probably they should go with an SQL Server. However, if they're inclined towards AWS or if they don't have any such consent, and if their costing allows, then Oracle is the best bet.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution to house our database applications and as a part of our ERP. 

The solution has been scalable.

The stability is good. We find the product to be reliable. 

The solution is very easy to use in general.

Its initial setup is quite straightforward. The deployment is fast.

I would like to see more integration with other databases and the cloud as well as Microsoft's Office 365. It should have, for example, a certificate that is then authorized in Oracle Databases so that easy division will be possible with other cloud solutions.

I've been using the solution for eight to ten years at this point. It's been about a decade, or just under. We've used it for a long time in general. 

The solution is reliable and quite stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The performance is great.

The solution is quite scalable. It's not a problem if you need to expand. 

We have about 18 to 20 users on the product currently. We have managers, admins, and engineers on the product.

We do occasionally deal with technical support. For example, in the case of the wrong data entered in the ERP, support is required to purge out the wrong information.

We did not use a different solution previous to Oracle. We've always used Oracle. We started using it at version 6 around 2006 or 2007.

The initial setup is straightforward and simple. The deployment takes a maximum of one and a half to two hours. It's not difficult.

We only have and need one person for deployment and maintenance tasks. 

We are able to handle the installation ourselves. 

We have a license for Oracle Database. You need one in order to use it.

In terms of versions, we are using currently 11G and we are planning to move to 12G in a couple of months.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten.

I would recommend this solution to others considering implementing it.